


Sugar (Not Salt)

by Misos



Category: New Dangan Ronpa V3: Everyone's New Semester of Killing
Genre: (possibly) one-sided, Fluff, M/M, Valentine's Day, talent development plan-esque AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-15
Updated: 2018-02-15
Packaged: 2019-03-18 19:21:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 999
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13688136
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Misos/pseuds/Misos
Summary: Amami has bad taste.





	Sugar (Not Salt)

**Author's Note:**

> I love the challenge of writing fluff featuring DRverse Korekiyo. I refuse to compromise. I refuse to make him more palatable.

“Hey. Shinguuji-kun.”

He turned from the window he’d been gazing out of. It looked out onto the courtyard; he had probably been people-watching. Or, as Shinguuji himself would say, “human-observing”.

Rantarou held out the box. “Here.”

Shinguuji stared at it for several seconds with incomprehension in his yellow eyes. “You are not a Woman,” he observed at last.

“Well, when else am I s’posed to give you chocolate?” Rantarou laughed nervously.

Shinguuji kept staring for a while, but then it seemed he’d worked it out because he took the box. He held it as if it were an object from the furthest edges of the universe, impenetrable by the human mind.

Rantarou couldn’t stand much more of this awkwardness. “Look, if you don’t like chocolate, it’s okay.”

“Why, I love Chocolate.” That sounded so strange in Shinguuji’s voice. “Thank You. That was merely…Unexpected.”

“I made sure to get some that didn’t have anything salty in it,” Rantarou helpfully informed him. “I know how much you hate salt.”

“Oh, that was quite Considerate. But…” Shinguuji paused. “I do hope this is not a romantic Overture?” He raised an eyebrow casually, but the eye under it twitched. “As I have said, I _have_ a Lover.” He said this, as always, in exactly the same tone he used to talk about his sister, and Rantarou wondered yet again if he could really be the only one who noticed this.

“‘Course not! I know you do.” Rantarou performed the complex maneuver of lying through his teeth while also trying very hard to act as if Shinguuji were being entirely normal. “S’just a friend thing.”

Shinguuji seemed satisfied by this. “You are a very good Friend,” he observed.

“Huh, am I?” Rantarou felt his face heat up slightly. “That’s good. You deserve one.” Wait, was that…true? He didn’t know. It had just come out.

Shinguuji only turned back to the window. Rantarou was about to leave when he spoke again. “She gave me chocolate Too,” he said quietly.

“That’s…nice.” Rantarou didn’t have to ask who “she" was, nor did he like where this was going.

“She’s the only one other than You.” Shinguuji pulled a small box out of the pocket on his shirt. “See?”

Rantarou saw, and then he felt a faint chill. She was supposed to live far away, for, as Shinguuji always said, they had not touched in years (which in and of itself was a little disturbing considering Shinguuji’s age). And that chocolate was the brand exclusive to the department store half a mile from the academy. But he did not make this observation aloud. “So, nobody else?” This seemed not at all a sensitive topic in comparison.

“Yes.” But Shinguuji did not sound upset. “I am so very glad it was you, Amami-kun. I don’t think she minds if it’s from a Man. But from a woman, even platonically… She would be Jealous. Angry.”

How would she even know who’d given Shinguuji anything? Rantarou wanted to ask. _How would she know?_ This was the most troubling conversation they’d had yet, and that was saying something. He would have pushed Shinguuji to talk to Gekkougahara a long time were it not for one thing: Even a super-high-school-level therapist was subject to the laws of mandatory reporting, and Rantarou instinctively felt that if Shinguuji ever opened up he’d run afoul of at least one of those.

Shinguuji himself cut into these thoughts. “It is a beautiful Day.” He had gone back to staring out the window.

“Yeah, it is! How come you’re hiding up in this hallway? There was a warm front and it’s not half bad out there.”

“Mingling with others on this date is a Risk.” Shinguuji did not elaborate on whatever this was supposed to mean.

“Maybe I’ll…leave you to that, then.” Rantarou turned to go.

“Wait.”

And something grabbed his hand.

Heat filled Rantarou’s palm and coursed through his fingers, despite the fact that Shinguuji’s hand was colder. It was either a psychosomatic reaction to the concept of their hands touching, or the bandages were setting off his latex allergy. “What?” he asked, calmly, somehow.

Shinguuji let go of his hand already, but the heat was still there. Probably the latex then. “I would feel safer with you Here. You can watch for our female Classmates. I absolutely _must_ avoid being given chocolate by Them.”

Rantarou must not laugh. He had to stop himself. This wasn’t funny. Shinguuji was being dead serious and there was something wrong with him, to think that way. He absolutely couldn’t laugh! “Sure, I’ll stay,” he said, not laughing. He leaned on the windowsill.

Shinguuji’s fears were unfounded, Rantarou admitted as he glanced at him. The only part of his skin visible, the part around his eyes, was sallow and almost corpselike. His eyes would have looked more at home on a snake than on a human. His voice may have been smooth and sensual, but there was also something innately repulsive about it. He was tall in the worst way, a shapeless stick stretched unnaturally upwards. And that wasn’t even getting into his personality. Really, he had nothing to worry about when it came to girls.

…Why did _Rantarou_ like him again?

Shinguuji took a deep breath. Even that had a creepy rattle to it. “Do you know,” he said quietly, “how this holiday Began?”

“Well, not in much detail!”

And Shinguuji began to tell him. His eyes lit up as he talked, almost seeming to glow. He went on and on and on, his voice getting a little less soft, a little less low, and startlingly guileless. His mouth may not have been visible, but from the way the muscles in the rest of his face moved, it seemed likely that he was smiling. And still he kept going, like he’d swallowed multiple books on the subject.

Ah. Rantarou remembered now, as he too observed the humans in the courtyard. _This_ was why he liked him.

**Author's Note:**

> This wound up kind of...compact. I shoved a lot of things into few words. I hope it works.


End file.
